Abstracts of Speakers
Understanding and Communicating Climate Change
Jerry Mahlman
Princeton University
NJ, USA
Social progress on the human-cause climate warming problem is, in part, inhibited by current limitations in our understanding of climate change and in our ability to model such changes quantitatively. This presentation will emphasize those aspects of climate science that offer substantial challenges to our understanding. Our continuing deficiencies in pinning down key aspects of the science provide a wealth of challenges to our scientific community, as well as numerous opportunities for major new research ventures. The barriers to further progress on a number of research fronts are considerably larger than any research group or country can attack by themselves. The widespread demand for rapid progress in modeling, measuring, and understanding clearly provides a major challenge to the world's climate research communities. It is becoming obvious that we must enter into an era of increased international co-operation in climate modeling, measurement, and theory. Also, it is clear that we need clear and non-political means for communicating the evolving state of climate science understanding to audiences on a much broader scale than that provided by the assessment processes that are currently in place.
